Re: implementing reiserfs in C++ for a new OS

[mjt@nysv.org]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 06:54:16AM +0200, Spam wrote:
>
>  Take  as  an  example a inventor. If he has an idea that he wants to
>  protect he would need to patent it to protect it. Otherwise only his
>  work  can be protected with copyright. I am not sure that the actual
>  invention can be copyrighted either.

Who was the guy who invented the telephone separately of Bell
at the same time?
The reason Bell got his product pushed to the market was that he
could patent it first.

That's about it, the idea is not protected and the only way to protect
it is by patents, but hey, where have we seen a patent that did more
good than keep it at a neutral level?

The way patents are dealt with is that everyone goes out and patents
everything they can and then get money from the court because they
"own the idea of a seesaw swing"...

>  In  this  case  with  Hans,  Namesys and reiserfs/reiser4 the actual
>  written  code  and  documentation  etc  is covered by copyright. The
>  ideas  behind  the filesystems are not. They would only be protected
>  by patents.

Exactly.

The only patent that makes any sort of sense to me is, even theoretically,
is the medical patent. Medicine can take decades to implement so those
guys will want sovereignity over their work.

But there is the hidden aspect here as well: They would benefit from other
people having access to the sama data, the same research, the same idea,
and get it done faster and cheaper. Cut down the need for bootleg medicine.

This is not so far fetched from this case either imo.

Hans mentioned the cute movie script. Studios stealing scripts is not
really the same thing. The movie does not exist yet, only the script,
and what the studio is really doing is depriving the writer of his
deserved compensation for his work. That's not reimplementing an
existing idea.

As for the poem translated into French, of course the original author
has the copyright to his work, but the translator has the copyright
to his translation. The idea is untouched. What if the Greeks of old
had patented, nay, copyrighted as some people think ideas should be
copyrighted, the common structures of storytelling?

Or maybe if we couldn't use the material from old mythology, because
they are the intellectual property of someone else?
What about those guys who lived 50 years after the Greeks and took
ideas from them into their own mythos, before the copyrights would
have expired?

-- 
mjt